Poem 363

Possibly sparked by speculatively feeling my own irregularly shaped head … but worked up into a tale of the man in the moon knocked all the way down here into a terrestrial life … or (alternatively) a street person with a brain injury who latches onto the idea/identity as an explanation … every lunar crater is a sign of impact from some heavenly body in the past so it doesn’t have to have been a case of domestic affray, both man and woman could have been sent spinning apart forever by some completely random galactic billiard ball …

( I like the chalk face and the swallows, the line of music for a blunt instrument and the head/moon rising in the street … ‘crater face’ was a favourite soubriquet when I was at school for someone with acne scars … )

Crater Face

I used to sit round wondering
      how come I have all these dents
      in my head
                              I don't remember getting
any of them though that's not unusual
with this kind of dent
we're talking soft rounded hollows
      like the remains of fires or old
      dwellings
                         pockets of bone
in an eroded chalk face
where swallows nest

I could see my head as having been
at some time a line of music
for a blunt instrument
                                             but I seem
to keep myself to myself
not go looking for trouble
                                                   no tattoos
         for instance and I believe I've seen
         most of the likely areas

still this lumpy bumpy scooped-in skull
        shines more each day
under a steady ceaseless fall of hair
until children shout
                                        look
                                        here comes the man in the moon
and of course
I slap my forehead
I'm the man in the moon!
my head rising vast
silver and weightless in the street

but there was more than a man
I dimly recall
a woman as well
                                  sitting down 
to dinner together

looking up tonight
I see the table upended
                                                my lost wife
letting fly
                  me reeling round here on Earth
deafened
by a mighty eclipse
                                      over the ear